


Shifted

by toosolidcuuj



Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-11
Updated: 2015-10-11
Packaged: 2018-04-25 20:57:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 889
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4976254
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/toosolidcuuj/pseuds/toosolidcuuj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There’s something about telling someone you care about the thing you’re most ashamed of and they immediately forgive you and help you get over those feelings. The moment Aang realized he loved Katara.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Shifted

He still remembered the words he’d written. All during his flight into that fated storm they had echoed inside him, and he had found himself regretting the way he’d chosen them. I could have said it this way, he had told himself, and that would have been better. But it was pointless to think that way when the Southern Air Temple lay miles to the north and Gyatso was probably unrolling the parchment he’d left behind at that moment.

And now - now his hastily scribbled explanation loomed in his mind, only weeks old to him while the parchment it was written on had been for decades lost, or rotted, or torn, or most likely - burned.

Stop it, he told himself. You promised Katara. A few hours ago he’d told her he was done dwelling on the past, and he was. He couldn’t afford to focus on the world he’d left behind when the world he lived in now needed him so desperately. The comet would be here in ten months and he needed to be ready.

Ten months! That wasn’t very long at all. He supposed he could do it - Avatar Roku believed he could - but that didn’t make the task any less daunting. It was only barely possible, really, and only barely better than his situation before he’d run away. A hundred years had passed, and here he was, still twelve, still not ready to save the world, and still only months away from the end of the world as he knew it. If the monks had known about the comet, he might have started learning waterbending sooner, and earth, maybe fire… .

But the comet always came at summer’s end, and summer had only just begun when he’d run away. He’d never have been able to do it in three months. Still, a hundred years was a heavy price to pay for only seven more months.

And yet … he wouldn’t want it any other way. He wouldn’t have come out of the iceberg a moment sooner if it meant Katara wasn’t the one to make that happen. He didn’t know how he could handle any of this without her. If he’d gone into the Southern Air Temple alone …

She and Sokka were all he had now. A family, she had said, and he knew it was not a promise she had made lightly. They had stuck with him through all their crazy adventures since he’d come out of the ice, even following him to the Fire Nation and back. They’d seen each other at their best and at their worst, and though he knew his worst had been the despair that had triggered the avatar state, he had felt so much worse about confessing to her that he had run away than he had about making bare that uncontrollable anguish.

Running away would always be the most shameful thing he’d ever done - no question. He had been afraid to tell her, to tell anyone, really, but after what the fisherman had said, he knew he couldn’t keep the burden to himself anymore. So he told her. He was surprised how emotional it made him, how angry he still was with the monks for separating him and Gyatso - angry enough, apparently, to trigger the avatar state. Katara said he had a right to be angry, but Aang knew he didn’t after what he’d done. In the end, it hadn’t been the monks that had taken away everything he knew and everyone he’d loved. He had done it himself.

Aang hadn’t been sure what her reaction would be, whether to expect disgust or judgment or rage. He had never imagined that she would absolve him. But she did. She told him he gave people hope, but in the act of saying so, she had given it to him. He’d been struck down and drowning in guilt, but now he had hope that he could be forgiven. She had led his first steps down the road of healing.

How was it that just when he thought she couldn’t give him anything else, she found a way to put him further in her debt? He’d sensed it the first moment he saw her face, and he was doubly sure of it now: she was the most amazing person he’d ever met. He’d never known any other person with the power to affect him so deeply. He didn’t know what he’d do without her. He -

He loved her.

The realization left him dizzy, his head and his chest swirling in opposite directions all at once. He was in love with Katara of the Southern Water Tribe, his beautiful best friend, fellow waterbender-in-training, and the only family he had. He’d had a crush on her from the moment he laid eyes on her, but now it had grown into something else, something he never imagined he could feel.

It felt good to love her so deeply. It felt good to place his emotions with the living rather than the dead. It felt good to love and keep loving, rather than grieve.

He didn’t know whether he had her love, or how he would win it if he could. That was all in the future. All he knew now was that as long as she was here, he was definitely done dwelling on the past.

**Author's Note:**

> Originally posted on tumblr on 1/24/14.


End file.
